Maintained by Robin Tecon, microbiologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich. This blog is about bacteria (and other microbes) and the scientists who study them.

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Sunday, October 28, 2012

At the University of Lausanne, when I was a biology student,
our great professor Jacques Dubochet tried to instil in us some sense of the
physics at play in the biological world. He would ask us questions such as: “So,
how thick is the plasmic membrane?” or “How fast will a protein diffuse in
the cell?”. And we would be like: “Huhhh….”
So I’m convinced my former professor must be a great fan of the work of David
S. Goodsell.

David Goodsell is associate professor of molecular biology at
the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. He is an expert in the
structure of biomolecules, and he uses computer simulations to illustrate
molecular organizations and interactions. But what makes his work truly unique is the
use of classic watercolor painting to represent cells and their compartments: anything
from a bacterium to the Golgi apparatus of a eukaryotic cell, nerve synapses or
even viral particles. At odds with the oversimplistic representations of
cellular organization that many biologists enjoy, David Goodsell’s
drawings offer a real sense of what the biophysical world is. And did I mention
they were beautiful too? His website—Molecular Art/Molecular Science—is a great resource to learn more about his work.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

It’s probably a bit unfair to ask that question, but I can’t
help it. These days, I feel like most of the recent science books I read dilute
interesting information into too many pages. Well, it could be that the
majority of readers prefer long books. It may be true, but it’s definitely not
my case. [To be precise, what I mean by “recent” is what has been published in
the past ten to fifteen years.]

Thinking of what I read in the not-so-distant past, I find
for instance: “The elegant universe” by Brian Greene (1999), 448 pages; “The stuff of thought” by Steven Pinker (2007), 499 pages; “A guinea pig’s history of biology” by Jim Endersby (2007), 499 pages. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not
questioning here the quality of the books. Greene’s book is an informative
introduction to string theory, Pinker’s is a clever journey into linguistics,
and Endersby’s is a highly original work on the history of model organisms. I
really enjoyed reading Endersby and Pinker; I didn’t enjoy Greene that much,
but it might be the topic. But quality notwithstanding, could they have been
shorter without losing of their substance?

Thursday, October 04, 2012

The metaphor of the tree of life—which illustrates the common
descent of all life on Earth—was popularized by Darwin in its Origin of species and later by his
contemporary Haeckel, but apparently its roots can be traced back as early as
the 18th century in the writings of various authors (Archibald,2009). On a different line, it also of course echoes the biblical tree of life
mentioned in the Genesis.

However, about a decade ago, authors such as W. FordDoolittle (1999) have cast doubt on the tree as a valid representation of the history
of living organisms. Since then, articles that question
the tree of life have flourished1. And the debate is far from being
settled.

A tree or a rhizome?

Based on the recent development of comparative genomics, the
microbiologist Didier Raoult suggested in the journal the Lancet that Darwin’s tree of life should be replaced by a rhizome of life (Raoult, 2010). Raoult
sees the rhizome – a complex net of interconnected roots – as a more faithful representation
of the history of living organisms.